papariaretadafandomcom-20200213-history
Battle of Boron
The '''Battle of Boron '''was the second major engagement in the Flettan Rebellion of 1106. It was fought between rebels under Xethos Stamnoudus and Natalia Sytnikov and levy infantry under the commands of Luis Holt, Tyler Fitch and Marvin Aldrage. It took place on 10 April, 1107. Prelude On 22 October 1106, reactionary Xethos Stamnoudus ignited the rebellion by commandeering a column of levy crossbowmen and executing their commanders. Hampered by a lack of supplies, he was forced to immediate seek shelter in the ghost town of Wolfsville, where he spent the next three months drilling his force and vacuuming supplies out of nearby village. To the south-east, the SRB under Nataliya Sytnikov received word of the rebellion and promptly began raiding military outposts and looting villages loyal to the maix est regine'im. Further east still, long time opposition leaders Dave DeGrenier and Greg West managed to attract an additional rebel army of nearly 80,000. Facing four rebel armies in the space of two months, R15 Franklin Vincent began to attempt to consolidate his forces in the Cascyst Fletta. Having lost his northern militia to Stamnoudus, he was counting desperately on his eastern provinces that would still provide him troops along with the regulars he kept in the Fletta. However, this meant that to join his forces, the eastern provinces would have to cross or bypass the Rocky Mountains. The disastrous Battle of Wasatch proved that the rebels could easily hold a pass against levy columns in forced march. Compounding the problem was that the cavalry was only being recruited from Thunder Bay, depriving the southern provinces from having access to cavalry support, preventing them from properly reconnoitring the paths the columns march along. After Wasatch, Vincent sent orders to his columns to march within supporting range of at least one other column. Without horses to allow for messengers to quickly pass information from one column to another, this meant that the columns had to march very close to each other and because of the size of Vincent's army, huge quantities of troops had to march in very tight proximity. Vincent was already notorious for his inability to establish quality supply lines and this exacerbated the issue. By mid-to-late March, the Tuscaloosan columns of Luis Holt, Tyler Fitch and Marvin Aldrage had joined together and were marching toward the Sudamini'li Drubyetski Montangora Geto through the Sceafaricenian desert. The SRB, though lacking cavalry, had the horse to equip a couple of katascopi and managed to spot the columns near Mohon and Sytnikov promptly sent a request to Stamnoudus for troops to try to stop the columns before they reached the Fletta. Not having the troops to split, Stamnoudus decided to abandon the Wasatch pass and unite with Sytnikov's force. Without seasoned melee troops, he figured he had no hope of fighting off forces three times what he'd faced at Wasatch. This, the SRB could provide. On 4 April, the two small armies met in Ridgecrest (which had served as the SRB's base since the rebellion had started) not far from the Geto and a war-weary Sytnikov happily turned over command of the combined rebel army to Stamnoudus. Though there were a number of large ridges and a river, Stamnoudus held the rebels back on flatter terrain, hoping to isolate and completely destroy each column, which would require the columns not being pressed together by a valley. Instead, he decided to try to engage the militia in the open desert that surrounded the small village of Boron. For the time being, he held his forces in Ridgecrest to allow his troops to rest and drill out of sight. In the mean time, he set Clay Guzalak, who had attended the engineering college in Sør Esk Ridge prior to being conscripted and had proved himself as a capable middle-commander at Wasatch, to building a couple of ballistae. A few months prior, the SRB had struck the lumber camps on the opposite side of the Geto and had kept a hold of the lumber that was left over after they built up their camp and had held onto supplies from raiding military buildings to avoid risking supply shortages. These materials were turned into four Greek ballistae. The SRB raids had not gathered much in the way of ammunition, however, so makeshift bolts were fashioned out of more of the remaining timber to supplement the supply. Before the battle, a number of troops, most from Sør Esk Ridge, were able to fire a ballista, though not particularly proficiently. Out of curiosity more than necessity, Stamnoudus also made Guzalak teach him to aim and fire it. The Vincentian columns, meanwhile, were expecting an ambush at some point. Holt was the most experienced of the three generals, having served alongside DeGrenier in a couple of campaigns and thus acted as the deciding vote between the three generals, though the egos of Aldridge and Fitch prevented him from taking full control. His army was also the most prepared to deal with an attack similar to Wasatch, as he had split his column into regiments and given each a captain in the aftermath of Wasatch. Unfortunately, they had managed to scrounge cloaks from a Sceafaricenian village to distinguish themselves to Holt's exasperation. Holt's force, actually resembling a fighting force, acted as vanguard in risky terrain. Each time Holt came to a hill, he'd close up his troops and order them to keep a watch for enemies. In open terrain, however, he would allow his troops a half day to rest while the other two columns caught up and marched on either side of his column to allow the columns a wider foraging range. It wasn't wide enough to supply the massive column, and by the time they were approaching the Geto, all three columns were in dire straits and on a mad dash to cross into the more fertile Fletta. Armies The rebels were once again relatively low in number, but this time, they had melee skill. Stamnoudus had kept his five regiments mostly intact despite fighting Wasatch,. His line infantry numbered 25,065. A further 120 had been pulled away to man the ballistae and act as artillery guard. While he had offered Sytnikov control of his 350 Anglin Eyland shieldmaidens, Sytnikov refused to break up his successful force, so these troops once again served as Stamnoudus's reserves. Sytnikov fielded 11,784 regulars, down a couple of thousand from casualties sustained in previous scuffles. These were Estocada troops by nature, but were reasonably proficient with using shields and spears. Since they had no cavalry to worry about, they did not carry spears into this battle, however. On top of that, she decided to commit the SRB junior company, which acted as skirmishers when they actually fought. In total, 1,364 skirmishers were added to Stamnoudus's line, although Sytnikov had no intention of allowing them to fight in melee. As before, the rebel forces had a number of capable officers to work with. Stamnoudus continued to use Tom Woolf, Scott Schlosser and Dan Anglin to lead individual regiments. Guzalak had control of the ballistae and its guard and Dustin Eskridge replaced him in the line. Once again, Abby Schlosser was given command of the small reserve company with Stamnoudus holding his sister, Xena, back for the start of the battle. Sytnikov's force was depleted and thus a number of regiments had been consolidated to form four regiments, which were led by Elisabeth Strand, Anna Vonnegut, Jagna Sienkiewicz and Agnes Stendahl. The SRB junior company was kept separate from these and was led by Viktoria Raske. As ever, the Vincentian columns had a significant numerical advantage. All three of the columns alone were numerically superior to the combined rebel army. The smallest belonged to Aldridge, who had been recruited from the western most province of Tuscaloosa. Hoping the Sceafaricenian natural sword skill would have infected his province by osmosis, over 30,000 of his troops were light swordsmen. The rest, he intended to use as axe infantry. However, with an iron shortage having plagued Vincent's regime, Aldridge had only spears to equip the remainder of his troops until he could reach the Fletta. The result was over 12,000 useless troops who were trained to make the least effective usage of their weapon. This gave him a total of 42,640. Attrition had taken its toll, however, because this number came from ninety-one companies that originally numbered five hundred men each. Whether this was due to starvation or desertion is unknown. Fitch's column was slightly more balanced. The bulk of his force was made up of hoplites, of which he had about 25,000. To supplement this, he had about 10,000 hypaspists to be used either on the flanks or in reserve. The remainder of his force was crossbowmen, of which he had just shy of 10,000. They were armed with belt hook crossbows, which without having proper experience with allowed them to fire about two shots a minute compared to the rebels' four shots a minute with their gastraphetes-based crossbows. Despite this disadvantage, it was a ranged threat that would keep the rebels from firing exclusively on the tighter infantry formations. Fitch's column numbered 44,784 at the time of the battle from ninety-two companies originally. Holt had his own contingency of skirmishers, although they only numbered 2,000. His main line consisted of 39,000 hoplites; while he preferred axe troops, axes were a luxury he could not manufacture en masse. He did manage to equip four companies with axes and these he treated like a guard unit despite the fact that they were still poorly trained conscripts. 5,000 sword infantry completed his tally of 47,848 troops from ninety-six companies. As Holt had the experience to prepare food for a march, his column had suffered the least amount of attrition, but the toll of having no foraging ground and having had to wait for the other two columns after Wasatch had begun to start eating away at his troops as well. It total, the rebels had 38,683 and four ballistae fit for battle against 135,272 under the Vincentian forces. At more than 26,000 archers, the rebels still had the skirmishing advantage, but the SRB's melee troops were hopelessly outnumbered. Once again, the rebels would have to hack away at the conscipts' morale as best they could before they could actually get into melee and exploit the fact that even with Holt's attempts to establish a middle command, there was no definitive chain of command amongst the Vincentian militia. Battle On 10 April, Vincent's three columns were marching close enough to the ridge behind which Stamnoudus had picked out to hide behind. Marching due west, Fitch was the northern most column and closest to the ridge, only about four hundred metres from it and much farther north than he should have been in search of supplies. Holt was still in the centre and Aldridge was on the other side. Behind the ridge, Stamnoudus put his line infantry into two ranks behind the ballistae with the SRB juniors on the left. Sytnikov held her troops a few metres behind. At 08:00, the ballistae were rolled up the top of the hill and opened fire on Fitch's column at 10:40. Consternation quickly ensued as Fitch suddenly discovered his troops were being killed by ballista bolts. He promptly turned to face this threat, but his force was not at all organized. Without taking the time to sort it out, he ordered the whole mass forward to the ridge, not separating his ranged troops from his melee troops. On the third volley from the ballistae, Fitch was shot in ribs and fell from one of the three horses in the entire makeshift army, giving one quick-thinking soldier the means to warn Holt about the engagement. The rest of the column was thrown into complete disarray with a number breaking and other advancing since they heard no order to stop. Stamnoudus, seeing he had no hope of isolating the remaining columns, advanced his infantry in front of the ballistae and moved a few metres down the hill. When Fitch's advancing troops were within 200 metres, he let the first rank fire and instantly broke what was left of Fitch's column. Sytnikov, who had kept her troops behind the ridge but advanced herself to view the battle with Stamnoudus, ordered Guzalak to quit firing and was immediately overruled by Stamnoudus who was looking to completely shatter Fitch's troops. He moved his line up as they retreated, trying to get extra shots on them, ending up halfway down the hill but still with an uphill position. Holt's Advance By this time, Holt had seen the first of the routing troops and received the messenger. He quickly took command of the routing troops and rallied as many as he could. Now with a significant ranged threat, he advanced Fitch's archers with his own to fire on the rebels at 12:30. Because they had to fire uphill, they had to advance fairly close to get decent shots. Fearing that they wouldn't last, Holt supported them with his hoplites along with most of Fitch's. Stamnoudus held fire with his main line and let the ballistae and the SRB juniors pick away at them until Holt ordered his crossbowmen to halt, and then let both ranks fire. Almost all of the Vincentian crossbowmen broke instantly, and the few that remained inflicted little damage. Holt could now see the sparse numbers of the rebels and ordered Fitch's hoplites forward through the routing archers. Stamnoudus switched his orders to fire-by-rank for each individual regiment, hoping to induce more shock from having more volleys land. Missing their leader and a under a near incessant hail of fire, Fitch's hoplites shattered completely and pushed their way through Holt's troops. This trapped Holt's trooped in place, but they provided Holt's troops with excellent meatshields while Holt rallied Fitch's archers once again. Aldridge was on the way as well, but was still an hour's march away from Holt. Regaining a few of his archers, Holt moved them forward to unleash a devastatingly pitiful volley upon Stamnoudus's troops from too far away to hit much. With the uphill advantage, Stamnoudus was able to return fire and again, they broke under the shock of a well-timed volley. Holt then advanced his own hoplites forward, but Stamnoudus had another rank to fire at them and at 13:15, Holt, seeing he had lost thousands of troops and wounded about a dozen of the rebels in exchange, pulled back to reorganize his infantry and what little remained of Fitch's column. Aldridge's Advance While Holt was struggling to get his troops to engage the rebels, Aldridge had been marching to turn their right flank. Not paying attention at all to Holt's retreat, he advanced his swordsmen forward perpendicular to at 13:35. Once Holt was out of range to properly support Aldridge's attack, Stamnoudus managed to wheel his entire formation to face Aldridge, though he pulled the SRB juniors and Woolf's regiment from his new left flank and marched it up the hill to his right to support the SRB regulars who suddenly found themselves on the front line. Because of their positioning, Guzalak's ballistae were able to start taking shots as soon as Aldridge entered range. Aldridge, now facing the most even numerical odds any of Vincent's generals had faced, sent his spearmen to draw fire on the rebel left flank. This, they were successful at and it took three volleys for Stamnoudus to break them. By the time they had, Woolf had managed to rejoin the line on the right, but Aldridge's swordsmen were fairly close to making contact with the rebel line. Stamnoudus ordered the three regiments about to take the charge to fall back. At the same time, Sytnikov rejoined the SRB, wheeled it to face Aldridge's charge and sent it forward. Woolf, on his own initiative, advanced his regiment forward to clear the way for Sytnikov to get a clean charge and surround Aldridge's regiment. If Aldridge saw the situation developing and intended to do something about it, he did not get a chance to do anything about it. A ballista bolt hit him in the torso and left his brigade leaderless mid-charge. The SRB landed a clean charge meanwhile and began to slaughter Aldridge's troops. Stamnoudus halted his troops' retreat and had them fire into the flanks and rear of Aldridge's army where it was safe to do so. Holt's Second Attack Holt could see Aldridge's troops getting enveloped and realized that his only chance to save the battle was to smash the new rebel flank and at 13:55, advanced once again. Stamnoudus and Guzalak saw them coming and Guzalak, terrified of friendly fire, began to fire on Holt's troops, picking at Holt's captains. Stamnoudus desperately wanted to break Aldridge's troops before refocussing on Holt, especially since the most vulnerable regiment (Eskridge's) on his left flank was dealing the most damage to the enemy swords. However, once the remnant of Fitch's crossbowmen began to form up, he ordered Anglin to turn around and fire on them. In a minor blunder, Anglin allowed his troops to fire a final volley in the backs of Aldridge's troops, meaning that they had no shot to fire at Holt's crossbowman and thus allowed them to fire the first shot. The resulting volley was far from catastrophic, but a stray bolt hit Stamnoudus in the right shoulder. Xena, his sister, had to extract Sytnikov from the brawl to take over. Having been in melee, Sytnikov had no idea that Holt had advanced 50,000 troops on their flank until Xena pointed it out. Anglin, meanwhile, was in dire straits. Holt couldn't hold onto his skirmishers for a second volley, and they had shattered completely. However, his hoplites and swordsmen were bearing down on him on he did not have any support at all. Sytnikov decided to move the other line regiments to fire on Holt's troops and left only the SRB juniors supporting the melee. Anglin, meanwhile, fell back before Holt's troops. Sytnikov attempted to signal to him to charge into the back of Aldridge's troops, but he either didn't see it or ignored it and skirted around the melee to take refuge behind Abby Schlosser's reserve company. Once the full fury of the rebel crossbowmen had begun to fire on Holt's troops, they began to waver, but a few of the hoplites made it into Scott Schlosser's regiment. Sytnikov, unable to track the massive battle, did not support him initially, but by this point, Lyla Lehr had yanked the bolt out of Stamnoudus's shoulder and he retook command by sending the first rank of his own regiment into the flank of the hoplites fighting Schlosser. In the middle, the SRB was beginning to suffer. For all the fire that had come in, Aldridge's troops still outnumbered them significantly and had begun to encircle them. Stamnoudus figured by now that he needed a quick break in the centre if he wanted to preserve the SRB as an effective force in the campaign, let alone the battle, so he committed the first ranks of Eskridge's and Woolf's regiments to the brawl and, unaware that Anglin had just retreated from Holt's army, sent his first rank charging into its midst and advancing his second rank to point blank range. His sister, meanwhile, took her company and swung it around Holt's left flank to start firing into the blob. The remnants of Aldridge's troops began to waver upon the influx of fresher troops and began to falter. Sensing the turning point, Guzalak sent his artillery guard into the melee against Holt. However, this left the ballistae completely open and Holt had kept his axes in reserve. He now sent them to disable the artillery as they had no hope of being supported. Aldridge's troops shattered just as Holt's axes got to the ballistae. The SRB was free but exhausted and Stamnoudus hesitated to put Sytnikov back into danger so quickly, but Holt had the same reservations about committing his axes to what would be a suicidal engagement against the SRB and pulled back. Stamnoudus also had line infantry freed from the melee and immediately moved them into position to fire on Holt's hoplites, who were having their way with Anglin's and Guzalak's regiments. The flanking fire quickly diminished their will to fight and at 15:10, they broke. While Sytnikov ordered the SRB to start picking up the wounded, Stamnoudus wasn't done yet. As he did at Wasatch, as soon as he saw the last troops break, he ordered a general charge. As many of his troops hadn't actually been in melee the entire battle, they were fresher than the routing hoplites and began to cut them down in swathes. Unable to properly swing a sword, Stamnoudus ran to the now abandoned ballistae and, using Guzalak's training and two loaded pieces, managed to hit Holt in the back between the shoulder blades while he tried to organize the retreat, effectively ending any hope of the survivors reuniting and making it to the Fletta. However, trying to operate heavy artillery with his damaged shoulder ended up doing irreparable damage to it, removing his ability to raise his right arm above his shoulder. Aftermath The Battle of Boron was a decisive tactical victory for the rebellion. Once all of the columns were accounted for, 41,467 of Vincent's army were killed, which was a 31% casualty rate. The rebels suffered only 1,417 killed and 2,764 seriously wounded, which was 11% of their effective force. Strategically, the victory was even more decisive. While more than two-thirds of the levies survived, the loss of every officer and the poor conditions prior to the battle ensured that the full force would be lost to Vincent, which was close to 10% of his army. However, the SRB bore the brunt of the casualties, Sytnikov losing more than a fifth of her regulars. She could count on a few to recover, but she was down to a half of her original army being fit for battle and beginning to tire of seeing her troops bleeding. Stamnoudus once again drew some ire for his conduct during battle. Not a single enemy who had fallen on a field of battle against his army had yet lived and not one soldier who had surrendered or unsuccessfully attempted to run from his troops had been spared. Viktoria Raske, who had command of the SRB junior company wrote after the battle that Sytnikov was quite shocked by his orders and was informing him of her opinions until he rolled his shoulder around enough to force it to start bleeding and her anger melted. Because of Sytnikov's war exhaustion and Stamnoudus's unwillingness to push her, they did not leave Ridgecrest until May to begin marching to besiege Flettaville. This did give Dave DeGrenier and Greg West ample time to start winning battles in the north, as few of Vincent's officers wanted to travel the southern highways.